The secret to getting a SNAPPY Sausage | Beyond the Recipe

are you having a hard time getting your sausage to snap place because today episode is snap Centric and I'm going to be covering every tip and every trick that I know so that the next time you make sausages you can get that nice Snappy bite today we're going to be making one of my all-time favorite sausages the Texas hot links and I'll put a recipe Link in the description box below in case you want to make it for yourself we're going to cover every single step from beginning to end but this time we're going to approach each step and how it relates to the snap ability of your sausage are you ready let's get started first things first high quality natural casings I like using hog sheep also works great and you want to make sure they're grade A casings these come from the sausage maker and if you want to increase the chance of getting a really nice snap on your sausage stick the casings under 35 millimeter both hog or sheep those are going to give you nice thin walls and a nice Snappy bite so let's go ahead and prepare these casings these are 29 32 millimeter probably the most popular choice and my personal favorite and all we did was separate them into five strands at this point I'm going to show you what I do to get these ready and I'm also going to explain how what we're going to be doing influences the snap let's go ahead and start by rinsing these off casings are usually packed in salt or in some sort of a salt brine and so what we want to do is get the salt out from the inside of the casing as well as from the outside of the casing so I'm going to start just by rinsing the outside of the casing just to remove any excess salt from the outer part of it and notice I've got two of my fingers inside the casing we're going to use that as a point to fill that casing up with water and that's going to rinse the inside out but it's not only going to rinse the inside out it's also going to stretch it out stretching your casing out is going to allow the wall of that casing to open up to its maximum capacity which is going to help you stuff it a whole lot easier and it's also going to help that casing to become a whole lot more tender which is the first step in achieving a proper snap so I'm just going to take my fingers pinch that casing and run it through to get rid of any air pockets and the excess water that's in that casing we want it completely empty by the time it's done and it should feel very well hydrated by the time you're finished this is exactly what it should look like we've got five cups of fresh water and I like to separate the casings it just makes it easier later and what I'm going to do is add a half a teaspoon of baking soda for every two cups of water that baking soda is going to alkalinize the water and this is just regular baking soda you can get at the grocery store nothing special and what that is going to do is that's going to help make your casing very slippery it's going to be easier to put on your horn easier to stuff it's going to make getting rid of any knots super super easy and will greatly reduce casing blowout so our water is treated that baking soda is going to do its thing and a lot of people don't realize this but it's the actual water itself that's going to help tenderize the casing and what I would recommend is a 12 hour soak I know it takes a little bit of planning but trust me you're going to love the results so we're going to put those casings one in each one of those containers and that's going to go into my refrigerator overnight that is it just that simple okay so before these go into the fridge let me just show you something about these casings these are very very translucent when I open them up you can see right through them just about you see my fingers these types of casings are going to give you the best possible chance for an amazing snap everything looks great we're going to go ahead and take these and place them into the refrigerator overnight for 12 hours they're going to soak tomorrow we'll prepare the meat all right let's talk about the meat we're going to be making 30 pounds of Texas hot link we've got pork shoulder and pork fat and the very first thing you want to do the very first thing you should always do is pre-freeze your meat I'm talking 32 to 34 degrees Fahrenheit at the minimum that's going to give you the best grind I would never recommend taking meat directly out of the fridge and grinding it because you're more than likely going to end up smearing the fat and what happens when you smear the fat is a very thin layer of fat gets between the meat and the casing and that keeps the meat from bonding to the casing properly so always pre-freeze your meat I'm going to do just a quick temperature check here before and after this just came out of the fridge it's been sitting on my counter for probably 10-15 minutes and we're in the low 50s this is an unacceptable temperature to grind your meat you're going to end up with a disaster of a sausage if you try to grind this at this temperature trust me when I tell you that so let's go ahead and pop this into the freezer for about 45 minutes and this is what it now looks like 45 minutes later now when you're pre-freezing meat and the more you have in the tray you know the taller your meat snack is the longer it's going to take to pre-freeze so it's better to spread it out as best you can if you have that capability otherwise you're just going to have to leave it in there a little bit longer the temperature of the fat looks like it is exactly where we want it 32 31.5 absolutely perfect this is going to give us a great grind let's take another temperature of the meat we're in the low 30s this is where I like to grind at typically you know 30 to 34 is kind of my preferred you know temperature of grinding that's what I would recommend and you are usually never going to have a problem if you stick within those temperatures all right so this is perfect our next step is to grind the meat let's talk about it when it comes to grinding your meat you could use whatever size grinder you have even a KitchenAid grinder would work fine it doesn't matter the plate you use whether it's coarse medium or fine what matters is how sharp they are and when you rub your fingers across the holes they should feel almost like they're catching uh if they feel super smooth like rounded edges then your plate is more than likely dull and you're going to either want to sharpen it or grab a new one if you try to grind your meat with a dual plate or knife you will absolutely destroy your sausage it will smear the fat it's going to ruin the texture you're going to end up with this crazy cardboard like texture and the snappiness will be the least of your concerns trust me so sharp plate and sharp knife if you need a refresher on how to sharpen that piece of equipment check out the link in the top right hand corner we go over it in full detail all right let's assemble our grinder head this is a number 32 Grinder from the sausage maker it's part of their Pro Series line there'll be a link in the description box but remember the size grinder that you use does not matter you can still get a Snappy sausage no matter what size you use all right our meat is ready let's get it into the grinder and grind away [Music] all right [Music] foreign and our grind looks beautiful the two words I would use to describe this grind is loose and pebbly it's not greasy it's not bound together and this is because our meat was properly chilled before we put it in the grinder if you properly chill your meat and your blades are sharp yours will be loose and pebbly as well this is going to go back into the freezer so that we could re-chill it before we mix it very important while we look at our spices now the spice profile that you use is mostly Irrelevant this is the basic spice profile mix for the Texas hot Lakes what I would recommend though especially if you're having a hard time getting a nice snap is adding some sort of a binder the white powder you see on top is potato starch and it really doesn't matter what binder you use you could use high temp non-fat dry milk you could use nutritional yeast you could use a couple eggs maybe even some soy protein isolate like I said it really doesn't matter but if you use a binder it's going to increase the water holding capacity of your sausage and it's also going to give you a really nice stick key batter which is going to help that meat come together and it's going to help that casing stick to that meat a lot better and so adding a binder is a great crutch and will increase your chance of getting a nice Snappy sausage but I do want to say that adding a binder is completely optional you don't technically need it to get a nice snap all right so we've got that part covered let's now look at the liquids the liquid that you add to your sausage is also very important this is going to help loosen up your batter it's going to make it nice and sticky and that's what we want and the amount of liquid that you add is completely relative to whether or not you add a binder if you are not going to add a binder then I would stick to about five percent liquid if you are going to add a binder like in this case we added potato starch you can go all the way up to 10 liquid which is going to make it even stickier and a sticky batter is a snap's best friend let's move on our meat has been re-chilled and this is a step that's most often overlooked we want to make sure that that temperature sure is between 30 and 34 degrees Fahrenheit before we mix it the active mixing is in and of itself going to generate friction which is going to naturally increase the temperature of our meat and we just want to make sure that it stays nice and cold so we don't smear the fat or ruin the texture of the sausage we have our 50 pound meat mixer from the sausage maker and although you don't see this in many of my videos because I normally make small batches I just want to say I absolutely love this meat mixer this is a great way to mix large batches of meat it keeps the meat nice and cold and as you can see I've got it connected to my grinder which turns it into an automatic mixer which is absolutely brilliant so we're just adding our dry spices I'm now going to come back with the liquid ingredient and when it comes to mixing in your ingredients you can technically combine both the liquid and the dry ingredients and just mix it in all at once you're going to get the same results not a problem and notice as we add the liquid ingredient our mixture becomes a lot tackier a lot stickier it's going to completely change in texture as you can see right here here and this is what we're looking for we want a very sticky a very tacky meat batter and most of our sausage bacon videos we talk about how the batter is going to stick to your hand if you grab a handful of it just like that and that's the best way to describe it I mean I wish I could tell you you know you should mix it for five minutes but the truth is each batter each recipe is going to be completely different and so you have to mix it until it gets nice and sticky and that stickiness is going to help bind all those ingredients together but it's also going to help that casing adhere to the meat which is one of the key components of having a nice Snappy sausage so let's go ahead and get this out of that mixer and get it into a casing as we are moving right along this next step is going to get us one step closer to the snap trust me when I tell you you're gonna love the end result of this particular sausage we are using a dedicated sausage stuffer and you want to make sure that you pick the right horn for the size casing that you're using we're using 29 32 millimeter casing so we're going to be using a three-quarter inch stuffing horn that's what this size is right here if the horn you're using is too big you could cause your casing to rupture it's also going to be quite difficult to feel and if your horn is too small you can create too many air pockets in your casing itself so just try to get a horn that's slightly under the size of the casing that you're using now it's time to get our very sticky meat into that Hopper and what we want to do is we want to minimize the amount of air pockets that are in this batter and so we're going to do that by grabbing small handfuls and just slamming them down and that's just going to compress any of that air pocket out the reason we don't want air pockets in our batter is because those air pockets are going to keep the sausage casing from adhering properly to the meat it's also going to collect little pools of rendered fat and rendered fat inside your sausage casing can pose problems okay just remember that all right so we're done stuffing this and I do want to say this one thing before we move on if you're not using a dedicated sausage stuffer and it doesn't matter what size if you're using something like a kitchen Aid stuffer or a you know a grinder with a stuffer attachment if you're going to be using that then I would recommend to re-chill your meat down to also 30 32 degrees Fahrenheit because those are not the most efficient stuffing machines they actually generate a lot of heat and are the leading cause for ruining most people's homemade sausage so a dedicated sausage stuffer and it doesn't matter the size is a worthy investment if you're serious about making sausage it's the one piece of equipment that will immediately level up your sausage okay now that that's out of the way let's get our casing together we are down to the last few tips on how to get an amazing snap from your sausage and this one right here can make or break the end result so we've got our casing it's been in the refrigerator overnight at least 12 hours and we're going to put a little bit of water on that horn that's going to help lubricate it and water is really all you need you don't need to use any oil I have seen people use oil before and oil can actually hinder the casing from binding to the meat properly not saying that it will but it could cause a problem and what we're trying to do is minimize any problems I could guarantee that water will never cause you a problem so we're going to do is put our fingers into that casing and it should be nice and slippery we're going to make sure that we put a little bit of water in there there you go we got a little water bubble right there and what that's going to do is that's going to help lubricate that casing as it goes onto the horn it's going to keep a nice steady flow of water which is going to give us a very slippery casing when you're done you should be able to slide your casing back and forth without any problems if you notice that it's sticky right if it's not sliding you can either re-lubricate it or maybe even scale down the size of your horn because it should be very slippery and that's going to make stuffing a whole lot easier and speaking of stuffing our goal here is to create a plump sausage we don't want it so packed that it explodes right that's too full we just want to have a nice firm plump sausage so let's get this tied off and I'm going to show you the technique that I use in order to achieve said sausage our casings tied off at the end and what we need is a little hole to allow excess air to escape and there we go so now we won't create any air bubbles and although I like to tie my casing off before I start stuffing you could technically leave it untied and then just do it at the end all right so here's the technique with my right hand now I'm using an electric sausage stuffer from the sausage maker so my foot is actually controlling the pedal so with my right hand I'm just squeezing on that casing at the very end and with my left hand I'm going to be guiding the sausage now if you're not using an electric sausage stuffer you're going to grab it with your left hand and hold it underneath and you're going to pinch it with your thumb and your forefinger and with your right hand well that's going to be cranking the sausage stuffer now this applies to right-handed people so if you're left-handed you're going to do the opposite of everything I just said all right we're going to go nice and easy here I am very gently pinching the end of that horn with my index finger and my thumb and the tighter I pinch the more meat I'm allowing to come into the that casing the tighter my sausage is going to be basically and so what I like to do is just with my left hand check the plumpness so to speak of my sausage if I feel like it's too loose I'll squeeze a little tighter if I feel it's too tight I'll let up a little bit and this does take a little bit of practice and what you're looking for is kind of a nice even consistent sausage not a lot of air pockets let's give it a little squeeze right quick very good so it's plump I'm not overfilling it let's give it another squeeze just to kind of see where it's at right here check that out very very good I'm loving the way this is coming out now I'm going to stop right here to give you kind of an indicator let you know you're on the right track if you can take your sausage and squeeze it with your index finger and your thumb and it leaves an indentation then you're on the right track but if you try to squeeze it and it feels like it's about to explode your sausage may be a little on the tight side and it's not a big deal just loosen your grip on the horn and that's going to loosen up your sausage just a little bit and what you're looking for is a perfect balance you don't want it under filled you don't want it over filled and this is where practice makes perfect the more you do it the better you'll get at it alright so we are at the end of our casing let's go ahead and take it off the horn and it's now time to link our sausage now there's several different techniques that we've used on this channel what we're going to do here is alternate how we link our sausage so I'm just going to find a little mark on my tray that way each one of my links are fairly concerned assistant and the size of your link is irrelevant we have specific buns for our links that's why we're making ours this size but you can make them whatever size you want we're going to go ahead and make our Mark and twist that three times away from us that's going to be our first link and notice we've got a nice plump sausage this looks amazing it doesn't have a lot of give this is perfect our next link we're going to go ahead and Mark it same spot and we're going to twist that three times towards us and we're just going to alternate how we twist and I like this particular method because I find that it does give you a nice tight link but like I said you could link however you want and you're still going to end up with a nice Snappy bite how you link will not affect the snappage of your sausage just letting you know all right now we need to talk about pricking your sausage now it is not entirely necessary to prick your sausage if you don't have any air pockets you don't technically need to prick your sausage but I'm giving you tips to give you the absolute best chance for success and pricking your sausage is one of them start by pricking out any airpod Pockets you might have that's an absolute must you don't want air pockets even if it's just a couple prick them out air pockets prevent the casing from properly adhering to the meat and can create little pockets of rendered fat which is not a good thing so if you see any air pockets and it doesn't matter how big they are just give them a little prick and you should be good to go the other thing that I would recommend is once you're done pricking out the air pockets just give your sausage an overall prick it doesn't have to be super excessive by doing this you are allowing that casing to really adhere properly to the meat and you're creating very small spaces for some rendered fat to escape and that's going to keep it from pulling inside your sausage now this needs to rest in the fridge overnight so the Cure can do its job if you're making a sausage without cure or if you're making a sausage with a cure accelerator you do not need to let this rest overnight in the refrigerator but because we are using a cure this is going to go into the fridge overnight and tomorrow this is what it's going to look like notice that it's slightly dried out a bit and it's time to cook our sausage we're going to use using a smoking it smoker to cook our sausage here and I'm just going to place them on these sausage racks now you can just as easily lay them flat on your barbecue pit or your offset not a big deal but the key word here is gentle cooking we're going to be cooking these nice and gently we do not want to blast them with a whole lot of heat so on a rack they go and we'll separate them once they go into our smoker but we do want a little bit of space between each one of those links we're hanging those two down and I'm just going to go ahead and fill the rest of this bar up with sausage as we put it into our smoker and this is what everything looks like completely finished 30 pounds into the smoker we've got sufficient space front to back and notice we don't have a lot of space between the sausage but you don't need a lot of space you just want a little bit of space for airflow and for smoke penetration and I want you to notice how our sausages are glistening that moisture is condensation that's been formed on our sausage after we took it out of the refrigerator that condensation if we cook our sausage right now is going to cause our casing to be chewy a little on the rubbery side and it could cause the casing to separate from the meat we don't want that so the first thing we want to do is dry our sausage out this is arguably the most critical step in this entire process we want that casing to be glued to that meat and so what we're going to do do is just put a small fan in front of it now you don't need a fan you can technically if you have a digital smoker you could put it on you know 90 or 100 degrees and let it hang out in there for an hour and a half but putting a fan in front of it speeds this process up greatly look at this in just short of 20 minutes our casings are perfectly dry no moisture on them whatsoever and they've actually changed in color they've gotten a bit darker back here in the back let's give it a little feel what's going on yep not a problem everything is dry perfect now it's time to cook our sausage and the name of the game here is gentle cooking we don't want to come at it with too much heat too quick because that's going to render out the fat it could cause the casing to rupture and so if you're going to be cooking it in a digital smoker start low gradually increase the temperature if you're cooking on a pit or an Offset you can cook on indirect heat which is going to help crisp up that casing if you're cooking in an oven just make sure the temperature is not too hot 225 to 275 and then also if you're cooking on a skillet or a a griddle just make sure the temperature is on a medium medium low it should be fine since this is a smoked sausage we're firing up our Bella's cold smoke generator from smoking its smokers as far as the wood goes you could use whatever wood you like Hickory Mesquite work you know I personally like Oak a little combination of Oak and pecan is always nice and so that's what we have right here we're going to close this smoker down and let it do its thing while our sausages are cooking let's talk about this one particular issue that you're definitely going to want to be aware of when it comes time to cook your sausage don't overload your smoker or your barbecue pit you definitely want to know the limitations of whatever you're using to cook your sausages I'm using a model 4D from smoking at smoker and we can comfortably put 25 pounds we have 30 pounds in there right now and we're kind of pushing it the reason you don't want to overload these units is because the moment you add all that sausage to it the liquid that you added to the recipe is going to begin to evaporate and that evaporated liquid depending on the model of smoker or pit you have is going to collect inside that unit now if you have a lot of good airflow you're probably not going to have this problem but if you don't have a lot of good airflow that humidity is going to build up in such a way that it's going to cause your sausages to sweat and what's going to happen is as they continue to cook and that liquid sits on the outside of your sausage that liquid is in essence going to cause that casing to turn chewy and rubbery it's going to be slightly steamed so to speak so how do you fix this if you've overloaded your smoker well about two hours into the cook open up your door and see if your sausages are sweating if they're sweating that means there's too much humidity built up inside your smoker we need to get that humidity out of there and we need to dry the sausages so leave the door ajar maybe six inches leave the temperature exactly where it's at and let that humidity escape and in about 10 to 15 minutes those sausages are going to dry out once that happens you can close the door and you should be good to go and if you've followed all the steps before this you should end up with a nice Snappy sausage let's go take a peek at ours they should be done cooking I can't wait to taste them we are in the final step of this entire process and I'm glad you stuck with me don't forget to give this video a great big thumbs up if you like this type of content look at those Texas hot links we need to cool them down otherwise that casing is going to start to shrivel up now here is another little tip that you can use to get a Snappy casing if you're going to be using ice in your water to cool off your sausages which is totally okay just don't let your sausages sit in that ice water for too long it could firm up the casing so much that will actually turn into a chewy casing and you definitely don't want to do that so you only want your sausages in there just enough to where you cool them below about 100 degrees maybe 90 degrees and then go ahead and take them out and this is what our sausages look like I mean they look absolutely brilliant they smell incredible they look incredible there's a plumpness to them that I just can't wait to dive into now what we're going to do here is we're going to let these sausages Bloom and at this point everything that could be done has been done to achieve a Snappy casing all that's left to do is to heat that sausage up and see how we did and that's what we got going on right here now I just reheated these in the oven 225 degrees until the internal was about 150 and just check out this sausage the skin is nice and tight perfectly adhered to the meat there are no fat pockets that are separating the meat everything looks exactly the way that it should all right guys we've got our Texas hot link it looks absolutely amazing and let's just give it a bite hmm oh wow these sausages came out incredible beautiful snap incredible flavor and although the snappiness of a sausage doesn't influence the flavor it certainly elevates the experience and what I love about sausage making is that achieving results like this isn't a matter of luck it's a matter of technique and if you follow every step that we've outlined in this video practice good technique from beginning to end you're going to end up with the exact same results and I can't wait to hear about it now if you are still having a very difficult time achieving a nice Snappy bite be sure to leave me a comment in the comment section below we'll try to figure it out together thanks a lot for being here if you like this video or got something out of it a great big thumbs up always encourages me to make more videos just like this and if you're new to sausage making and you want to level up your sausage making game don't forget to hit that subscribe button and that notification Bell because we take you beyond the recipe to help you become a better sausage Baker thanks a lot for watching we'll see you in the next one bye-bye [Music] thank you

Channel: 2 Guys & A Cooler

Views: 62,142

Keywords: Easy Sausage Recipes, sausage, cured meats, meat preservation, pork sausage, Smoked Meats, how to get a sausage snap, make sausagre at home

Id: WAp6k8G43GQ

Length: 26min 11sec (1571 seconds)

Published: Sat May 20 2023